Protective gloves and garments made of mesh material are used by butchers and meat packers and also in any industry where there is a risk of cuts or punctures or the like.
Since the mesh gloves are inherently flexible but also fairly heavy, they tend to hang from the user's hand and would fall off but for a securing strap. Various types of straps have been developed to secure the glove about the user's wrist and/or forearm.
The prior art, however, discloses a number of often unsuitable straps. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 1,250,150 shows a helical coil strap joined to the mesh portion of the glove, U.S. Pat. No. 5,088,123 shows the use of a spring as a glove stiffening element; U.S. Pat. No. 4,471,495 shows a cuff enclosing a strap with a fastener; and PCT/EP95/04040 shows the use of a helical spring as a strap inside the cuff portion of the glove.
In practice, the helical spring type strap is uncomfortable and somewhat gangly appearing thereby distracting from the glove's otherwise finished appearance. The other types of straps which include some kind of fastener (e.g. a buckle) and which must be adjusted and coupled and decoupled before and after use suffer from a variety of disadvantages because they must be adjusted and buckled and then unbuckled and because their useful life is often short especially when they are made of fabric.